So, we hit this bar in Shibuya called X+Y based on a tip in the Wallpaper guide to Tokyo (which, by the way, must be written for people who make a lot more money than me). Anyway, this place was super cool in an amazingly cheesy fashion. The best way to describe it to a New Yorker would be it’s the bastard child of Milk & Honey plus the old party Vampyros Lesbos, but seen through a demented Japanese kaleidoscope.

Everything has a 70’s (or even 60’s) kind of feel, but then there’s this big-ol’ disco ball in the middle of the room and a shiny white grand piano against one of the walls. Next to the grand piano is a tiny stage on which was a white acoustic guitar in a stand and a white chair (both of which went unused while we were there).

Then, of course, there’s the side room who’s walls are all painted blank and upon which hang old-school looking nudes of Japanese women. Fantastic!

Not to be outdone, are the bathrooms. Their walls are also painted black, but so glossy that you can use them as ghostly mirrors while you use the facilities. Additionally, I hear the women’s room was outfitted with a bunch of buttons that controlled everything from the toilet seat going up and down, to the lights, to the flushing mechanism. Additionally, whenever you leave the facilities, either the beautiful hostess or sharply dressed manager are waiting just outside with towels to clean your hands!

I must remember to throw a party here or something if I ever move to Japan.

I have to recommend The Park Hotel to anyone visiting Tokyo for any reasons with one very important suggestion: request a room facing the Tokyo Tower. The view is fantastic.

The rooms were nice enough. The was no wireless, but they did provide an ethernet port and free relatively high-speed internet. The bed was firm but comfy. And the toilet was one of those futuristic johns that warm up when you sit on them and have a built in bidet.

The lobby was also nice, however I wouldn’t recommend the restaurants or the breakfasts.
I should also remember how fantastically central the Shiodome area was. Withiin walking distance was the Tokyo Fish Market, Hama Rikyu Gardens, the Tokyo Tower, and even (if you’ve got some energy) the Tokyo Imperial Palace.

I absolutely have to remember to book a room here next time I visit Tokyo.

This guy had the brilliant idea to tweak his photo’s color settings using Photoshop CS and above’s Match Color tool. Fantastic!

I gotta remember to use this sometime.

Well, according to Dr. Maoshing Ni turning yourself upside down for a couple of minutes daily is part of a collection of daily activities that should improve my memory! Who knew it was so easy? He lists a couple of other tips I should probably give a try as well in the post titled Paving the Way for Memory Lane, so I better remember to get with the program or be doomed to a dwindling memory and decreased concentration caused by “decreased blood flow to the brain and loss of brain cells.”

Image: upside down people for peace, originally uploaded by nycjournal.

Last Thanksgiving I took a photo of a burning tire repair shop as it lit up the night sky and thrust huge flames over adjacent buildings. I thought this was a pretty cool photograph, so I posted it to Flickr.

Within 24 hours, Gothamist had run a story on the fire using my photo, The Brooklyn Papers contacted me for usage of the photo in their publication and the photo’s views shot up to around 150 views. Over the course of the next couple days, the views continued to rise and after about 4 days the photo slowly crested the 300 views mark. It took about a week for the views to stop coming in, leaving the photo at around 360 views.

In the months since then, it’s gotten around 15 views. Today, one of the better photos I feel like I’ve taken is hovering around 385 views.

Last weekend I posted another photograph, this one of a woman wearing a small bikini standing in front of a blurry sky and sailboat. I posted it because I liked it. I thought it was kind of a cool photo.

Within 5 minutes the views were at 25. Within an hour they were in the 80’s. A day later it was at 245 views! Two days later it was at 365 views! (A feet it took the fire photo about a week to accomplish.) Now, 3 days later, the photo has 426 views!

When I first started to notice the rapid rise in views, I thought about taking the photo down, but decided I was being silly because upon closer inspection, there was nothing lewd or unsavory about the photo. It was just a small black bikini bottom and a hand and a boat and a sky. Of course, the old adage “sex sells” is true, but the attention paid to this unremarkable photo is astounding to me. I mean, what’s the big deal?

I need to remember to put bikinis in all advertising projects I work on…

This is from an article on Wired about “Big Questions.”

Most brains can handle only five to nine short-term memories at once. Newer information - phone call! ice cream! - can bump a previous memory out of storage before it’s committed to long-term recall. Even worse, new memories tend to merge with permanent ones, muddying the recollection of ritual activities. Michael “Professor” Solomon, author of How to Find Lost Objects, says it’s easy to accidentally substitute one routine motion for another. So look for your keys where you normally put your wallet. If that fails, check the car, the sofa cushions, the door lock, and (duh) your pocket. You’re probably staring right at them.

Now, if only I could remember to remember.

Yes, I signed up for a GameFly account a few months ago. I thought, hey, my enjoyment of my relatively new Xbox 360 (and my gamerscore) could benefit from the membership, so why not. I set up my account with dreams of playing the latest and greatest games in existence floating in my head. What was delivered, again to be clear, was far from that pipe-dream.

I started by putting Just Cause in my number 1 slot (hey, I played the demo and was somewhat interested). I them placed a number of secondary games in my queue. I got Just Cause and played it for a month of so. I liked the idea of taking over regions as I had done with Saint’s Row, so I was in to it. But, fairly quickly the game began to drag on (hell, those cut scenes sucked, sucked, sucked). So, back it went to GameFly.

And what did I receive back from GameFly? None other than the third game on my list! A game I had placed on there basically just to have something in my queue. (I mean I owned the great games for the 360 and was using GameFly to spread my wings a little.) I wasn’t miffed or anything. I just tried to play the game, was barely interested and sent it back.

Then, I once again received the third game on my list. (I can’t even remember what it was, it sucked so bad.) So, after a couple attempts at playing it, I sent it back…

Then, I once again received the third game on my list! WTF is the problem with sending me some Tom Clancy’s Rainbow Six Vegas!?! I want it. I’ve been wanting it. And yes, I still want it! But no, they sent me Enchanted Arms! Have you played this game!? It’s horrible and the voice acting could single handedly make anyone hate video games. After about 20 minutes of attempting to play this game, I packed it up and sent it back.

Than, I once again received the third game on my list!! No Kidding! Yes, Phantasy Star Universe was on it’s way to me. When you think about it, this game wasn’t really number 3 on my list, but actually something like number 6! It only became number 3 after I received a bunch of other game I had little interest in.

As you can imagine, I was miffed. I filled out the form on GameFly complaining. On February 2nd, I wrote:

I’ve consistently received the 3rd game in my queue rather than the first ones. This is very disappointing and I expect I’ll cancel my service if I can’t get the games I want.

On February 5th, I received the following:

Dear Patrick,

If you would rather wait for the game to become available and NOT have the next available game ship, keep an open rental slot by removing all other available games from your GameQ and return a game. When a copy does become available, it will get sent to the member who’s had it in their GameQ the longest and has an open rental slot at that time.

Please note that we do not recommend removing all other games from your GameQ as you would be missing out on receiving games and we will not credit for unused service time.

Wait a second. Did they just say that they’ll ship the first game when they’re good and ready and instead of receiving my 3rd in line, I should just wait for my number one and keep paying monthly dues!?!

Am I wrong in thinking that I pay monthly dues to receive games I want when I want them, and not wait for months (it has been that long) to receive the game in my first slot? I didn’t think so, so I went to their site to cancel my account.

This was additionally fun.

First when I started to cancel my account, I received the following:

Patrick, you still have 12 days left until your next billing period. If you choose to cancel your account now, your cancellation will be effective as of today, and you will not receive a refund or credit for unused time. Are you sure you want to cancel your membership now

Hmm, I’m canceling my account, yet they still want to hose me on the membership. Thanks. I bite the bullet and hit “continue canceling” only to receive:

While GameFly’s in-stock rate is far higher than any other online rental service can offer, we realize it can be frustrating if the game you want is not available. As compensation for your availability issue, GameFly is happy to give you a special, one-time offer on your next month of service for only $9.95 - that’s a 30% savings!

Bastards! So, they don’t want to service me correctly, but want to give me a 30% savings instead!? I would be happier getting that extra 30% of service rather than the 30% savings! Why don’t companies understand this!? This only made me more upset, so I continue canceling only to get this:

Yes, they remind me again, that I’m losing money by canceling their crap-ass service, but the most important thing to notice is this:

All rented games must be received by GameFly within 7 days of cancellation or you will be charged the full retail price.

Whoa! Not another month’s price? Not something fair? No, the entire retail price of the game! I know there have been many exclamation points in this post, but seriously, WTF is up with this? That’s literally 5 to 6 months of membership at my plan’s cost.

Of course, with the approximately 5 day postage on GameFly games, no matter what, you’re cutting it close… But I hadn’t even received the game yet!

The bottom line is, that until GameFly can offer service on par with NetFlix (which I never have trouble getting the number 1 movie in my queue) then they’re offering a service that will frustrate and confuse people. Add to that their “screw you if you don’t like it” attitude and they become a company I will never do business with again. It literally becomes cheaper to buy the games yourself and return them, then play their game.

I’m sure I’ll have no problem remembering: GameFly sucks.

As New York Magazine said about The Spa at Mandarin Oriental: “As close to heaven as a New York spa gets, this 35th-floor spot will leave you and your wallet feeling substantially lighter.”

There’s not much else that can really be said about this place. The sex-specific “heat experience” rooms outfitted with very large jacuzzi-ish “vitality” pools with submerged lounge seating, amethyst-crystal steam chambers, and interesting heat showers with colored lights corresponding to water temperatures are only the beginning to your “journey” at this place.

The services provided and products used are both unbelievable.

And ending the whole 3 hour experience with some time spent in the “relaxing” rooms looking blankly out of floor to ceiling windows at the amazing views from their 35th floor location makes you wonder how you can possibly manage trudging through the grime below again.

Expensive is an understatement, but I should remember to try to get into this place again.

It’s amazing how fast things can grow online through shared interests, especially around major events like the New York City Marathon. After checking out the marathon passing less than a block from my place, I uploaded a couple photos to Flickr. I guess because the marathon wasn’t even done by the time I did that (and since I’m only 6 miles or so from the start) no one had started a Flickr group to cover this year’s marathon yet.

So, I started the NYC Marathon 2006 group and put my couple measly photos in there… Under a week later there are now 36 members with over 619 photos!

I need to remember to use more online groups to check out other people’s creativity.

This memory happened over a month ago, so obviously I’m pretty fuzzy about the whole thing, but I was coming back from exchanging something at the Diesel store on 60th street at lunch time when I spotted a cute girl on the subway platform. Although we made eye contact, I wasn’t about to be all up in her business, so I began the process of pulling my iPod nano from my bag… only to have it swing free using the earphone cable like a tree vine. At precisely the perfect moment, it came unattached from the cable allowing it to make a beautiful arc in the air landing square in the middle of the E line tracks.

All I could do was look back at the cute girl whose eyes were bugged out when she said “oh shit!”

Now, I’m thinking to myself, “Hey, it’s right there. A mere 6 feet or so away. Just jump down and get it.” Then of course, the next thought is: “Are you kidding me? if you’re down there and the train comes, it’s death!”

The girl says something like: “What are you going to do?”

I’m like: “I got no idea… it seems pretty close…”

She’s all: “You are kidding, right!? I think you should go tell the attendant.” Note that the attendant at this station is waaaaay upstairs up a long escalator.

I think about this for a second. Consider my options. Weigh possible death or at the very least getting very dirty against the value of a sub $200 device. Briefly contemplate leaving it there should a train comes… but no train comes. Instead, I go upstairs leaving the girl on the platform and wait 20 or so minutes for some dispatched MTA workers to fetch my tiny music player.

I was actually really surprised at how fast the MTA workers showed up after being called, so I should remember that there’s no need to risk my life should I drop something on the tracks again.

(image by petrozo)